The James Webb Space Telescope—A Year of Significant Progress

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) celebrates a year of achievement with the 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill marked up by the US Senate, which confirms support of the James Webb Space Telescope until its launch in 2018.

JWST is an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is managing the development effort. The main industrial partner is Northrop Grumman; the Space Telescope Science Institute will operate Webb after launch.

Cryoconnect, a division of Tekdata Interconnections Limited and a leading UK-based wiring systems specialist, is manufacturing the spacecraft harnesses under contract to Northrop Grumman, NASA’s prime contractor. The complex harnesses form an essential part linking the spacecraft’s instruments and systems to the telescope controlling its alignment and providing temperature information for health monitoring.

The James Webb Space Telescope marked a year of significant progress as it continues to come together as NASA’s next generation space telescope. The year brought forth a pathfinder backplane to support the large primary mirror structure, mirror cryo-testing, several successful sunshield layer tests and the creation of an assembly station within NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s clean room. Achievements were also made in the areas of flight and communications software and the propulsion system.

Cryoconnect have also manufactured and delivered harnesses for three of JWST’s four primary Instruments, MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument), NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and NIRSpec (Near Infrared Spectrograph).

In December, manufacturing and testing of all flight mirrors was completed, during these tests mirror segments were cooled to temperatures similar to those Webb will see in space, around minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Two of Webb’s supporting and pathfinder structures were also completed. To assemble the flight telescope on the ground, a 139,000 pound structure will install the flight mirrors using an overhead track system supporting a robotic arm.

Also finished was the pathfinder backplane, a full-scale engineering model of the center section of the flight backplane. The backplane holds the mirror segments in place to form a single primary mirror. The full pathfinder element will consist of 12 of the 18 hexagonal cells (the center section of the primary mirror) of the telescope and contain a subset of two primary mirror segment assemblies, the secondary mirror, and the subsystem containing the tertiary and fine steering mirrors. It will demonstrate integration and test procedure. An important sunshield deployment flight structure fabrication was also completed.

All the members of the Cryoconnect team are proud to be involved in the spacecraft and instrument harnesses for the JWST program. The James Webb Space Telescope is an international collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is managing the development effort. The main industrial partner is Northrop Grumman. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) will operate Webb after launch.